Eng, agma, or engma (

capital Capital and its variations may refer to: Common uses * Capital city, a municipality of primary status ** Capital region, a metropolitan region containing the capital ** List of national capitals * Capital letter, an upper-case letter Econom ...

: Ŋ,

lowercase Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (more formally '' minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing system ...

: ŋ) is a letter of the

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet, also known as the Roman alphabet, is the collection of letters originally used by the Ancient Rome, ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered except several letters splitting—i.e. from , and from � ...

, used to represent a

voiced velar nasal The voiced velar nasal, also known as eng, engma, or agma (from Greek 'fragment'), is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It is the sound of ''ng'' in English ''sing'' as well as ''n'' before velar consonants as in ''E ...

(as in English ''sii'') in the written form of some languages and in the

International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standard written representation ...

. In Washo, lower-case represents a typical sound, while upper-case represents a

voiceless In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, it is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word phonation implies v ...

sound. This convention comes from

Americanist phonetic notation Americanist phonetic notation, also known as the North American Phonetic Alphabet (NAPA), the Americanist Phonetic Alphabet or the American Phonetic Alphabet (APA), is a system of phonetic notation originally developed by European and American ...

History

The ''

First Grammatical Treatise The First Grammatical Treatise (, roughly: "first language studies writ act") is a 12th-century work on the phonology of the Old Norse or Old Icelandic language. It was given this name because it is the first of four grammatical works bound in the ...

'', a 12th-century work on the

phonology Phonology (formerly also phonemics or phonematics: "phonemics ''n.'' 'obsolescent''1. Any procedure for identifying the phonemes of a language from a corpus of data. 2. (formerly also phonematics) A former synonym for phonology, often pre ...

of the Old Icelandic language, uses a single

grapheme In linguistics, a grapheme is the smallest functional unit of a writing system. The word ''grapheme'' is derived from Ancient Greek ('write'), and the suffix ''-eme'' by analogy with ''phoneme'' and other emic units. The study of graphemes ...

for the eng sound, shaped like a g with a stroke . Alexander Gill the Elder uses an uppercase G with a hooked tail and a lowercase n with the hooked tail of a script g for the same sound in ''Logonomia Anglica'' in 1619.

William Holder William Holder Royal Society, FRS (1616 – 24 January 1698) was an English clergyman and music theorist of the 17th century. His most notable work was his widely known 1694 publication ''A Treatise on the Natural Grounds and Principles of Harmon ...

uses the letter in ''Elements of Speech: An Essay of Inquiry into the Natural Production of Letters'', published in 1669, but it was not printed as intended; he indicates in his

errata An erratum or corrigendum (: errata, corrigenda) (comes from ) is a correction of a published text. Generally, publishers issue an erratum for a production error (i.e., an error introduced during the publishing process) and a corrigendum for an a ...

that “there was intended a character for Ng,

viz. The abbreviation ''viz.'' (or ''viz'' without a full stop) is short for the Latin , which itself is a contraction of the Latin phrase ''videre licet'', meaning "it is permitted to see". It is used as a synonym for "namely", "that is to say", "t ...

, n with a tail like that of g, which must be understood where the Printer has imitated it by n or y”.Robert W. Albright (1958)
''The International Phonetic Alphabet''
Its Backgrounds and Development, Indiana University. p. 11 It was later used in

Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin (April 17, 1790) was an American polymath: a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher and Political philosophy, political philosopher.#britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Wood, 2021 Among the m ...

's phonetic alphabet, with its current phonetic value. It was supposed to be in English but failed.

Appearance

Lowercase eng is derived from n, with the addition of a hook to the right leg, somewhat like that of j. Nowadays, the uppercase has two main variants: it can be based on the usual uppercase N, with a hook added (or "N-form"); or it can be an enlarged version of the lowercase (or "n-form"). The former is preferred in

Sami languages Acronyms * SAMI, ''Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange'', a closed-captioning format developed by Microsoft * Saudi Arabian Military Industries, a government-owned defence company * South African Malaria Initiative, a virtual expertise ...

that use it, the latter in

African languages The number of languages natively spoken in Africa is variously estimated (depending on the delineation of language vs. dialect) at between 1,250 and 2,100, and by some counts at over 3,000. Nigeria alone has over 500 languages (according to SI ...

, such as in

Shona Shona often refers to: * Shona people, a Southern African people ** Shona language, a Bantu language spoken by Shona people today ** Shona languages, a wider group of languages defined in the early 20th century ** Kingdom of Zimbabwe, a Shona stat ...

from 1931 to 1955, and several in west and central Africa currently. In

Isaac Pitman Sir Isaac Pitman (4 January 1813 – 22 January 1897) was an English publisher and teacher of the :English language who developed the most widely used system of shorthand, known now as Pitman shorthand. He first proposed this in ''Stenogr ...

’s Phonotypic Alphabet, the uppercase had a reversed-N form. Early printers, lacking a specific glyph for eng, sometimes approximated it by rotating a capital G, or by substituting a

Greek letter The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and is the earliest known alphabetic script to systematically write vowels as wel ...

η (''eta'') before modified to present form for it (encoded in Unicode as the Latin letter n with long leg: Ƞ ƞ).

Pronunciation of words containing eng sound

In most languages eng is absent in the Latin alphabet but its sound can be present in the letter n in words. In English, it is heard in the potential digraphs nc (hard c), ng (hard g), nk, nq and nx, often at the end of words. For the pronunciation of ng with eng, it can be in words such as ''singer'' and ''hanged'' and when it is in final position or in words such as ''finger'' and ''angle''. In British English, n is pronounced eng in the prefixes en- and in- when they are followed by c, g and q, as in ''encroachment'', ''engagement'', ''enquiry'', ''incursion'', ''ingredient'', ''inquiry'' and others. In other English dialects, the n is pronounced instead. In many British dialects, the ng in ''strength'' and ''length'' is simply pronounced , with g a silent letter, and the ng is otherwise pronounced in those words.

Usage

Technical transcription

, where it may also represent a

uvular nasal The voiced uvular nasal is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , a small capital version of the Latin letter n; the equivalent X-SAMPA symb ...

. *Sometimes for the

transcription of Australian Aboriginal languages Prior to the arrival of Europeans, Australian Aboriginal languages had been purely spoken languages, and had no writing system. On their arrival, Latin script became a standard for transcription of Australian Aboriginal languages, but the details ...

Uralic Phonetic Alphabet Finno-Ugric transcription (FUT) or the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet (UPA) is a phonetic transcription or notational system used predominantly for the transcription and reconstruction of Uralic languages. It was first published in 1901 by Eemil Nesto ...

including *

Teuthonista Teuthonista is a phonetic transcription system used predominantly for the transcription of High German languages, (High) German dialects. It is very similar to other Central European transcription systems from the early 20th century. The base cha ...

phonetic transcription system uses *

Rheinische Dokumenta The Rheinische Dokumenta () is a phonetic writing system developed in the early 1980s by a working group of academics, linguists, local language experts, and local language speakers of the Rhineland. It was presented to the public in 1986 by the ...

, a phonetic alphabet for many

West Central German West Central German () belongs to the Central German, Central, High German languages, High German dialect family of German language, German. It includes the following sub-families: * Central Franconian () ** Ripuarian language, Ripuarian (), spok ...

dialects,

Low Rhenish In historical and comparative linguistics, Low Franconian is a linguistic category used to classify a number of historical and contemporary West Germanic varieties closely related to, and including, the Dutch language. Most dialects and languag ...

, and few related languages.

Vernacular orthographies

Languages marked † no longer use eng, but formerly did. *

Bari Bari ( ; ; ; ) is the capital city of the Metropolitan City of Bari and of the Apulia Regions of Italy, region, on the Adriatic Sea in southern Italy. It is the first most important economic centre of mainland Southern Italy. It is a port and ...

Bemba Bemba may refer to: Languages and ethnic groups * Bemba language, or Chibemba, a Bantu language spoken in Zambia * Bemba people, or AbaBemba, of Zambia * Bemba, a dialect of the Buyu language of the Democratic Republic of the Congo People * Jea ...

Dagbani Dagbani (or Dagbane), also known as Dagbanli or Dagbanle, is a Gur language spoken in Ghana and Northern Togo. Its native speakers are estimated around 1,170,000. Dagbani is the most widely spoken language in northern Ghana, specifically among ...

Dinka The Dinka people () are a Nilotic ethnic group native to South Sudan. The Dinka mostly live along the Nile, from Mangalla-Bor to Renk, in the region of Bahr el Ghazal, Upper Nile (two out of three provinces that were formerly part of southern ...

Efik The Efik are an ethnic group located primarily in southern Nigeria, and western Cameroon. Within Nigeria, the Efik can be found in the present-day Cross River State and Akwa Ibom state. The Efik speak the Efik language which is a member of the ...

** Ewe ** Frafra ** Fula **

Ganda Ganda may refer to: Places * Ganda, Angola * Ganda, Tibet, China * Ganda, the ancient Latin name of Ghent, a city in Belgium * Ganda, a settlement in Kilifi County, Kenya Other uses * Baganda or Ganda, a people of Uganda ** Luganda or Ganda lang ...

Manding languages The Manding languages (sometimes spelt Manden) are a dialect continuum within the Niger–Congo languages, Niger-Congo family spoken in West Africa. Varieties of Manding are generally considered (among native speakers) to be mutually intelligible ...

** Nuer **

Shona language Shona ( ; ) is a Bantu language spoken by the Shona people of Zimbabwe and Mozambique. The term is variously used to collectively describe all the Central Shonic varieties (comprising Zezuru, Manyika, Korekore and Karanga or Ndau) or specifica ...

† **

Songhay languages The Songhay, Songhai or Ayneha languages (, or ) are a group of closely related languages/dialects centred on the middle stretches of the Niger River in the West African countries of Mali, Niger, Benin, Burkina Faso and Nigeria. In particular, ...

Wolof Wolof or Wollof may refer to: * Wolof people, an ethnic group found in Senegal, Gambia, and Mauritania * Wolof language, a language spoken in Senegal, Gambia, and Mauritania * The Wolof or Jolof Empire, a medieval West African successor of the Mal ...

** Zarma * American languages ** Inupiat **

Lakota Lakota may refer to: *Lakota people, a confederation of seven related Native American tribes *Lakota language Lakota ( ), also referred to as Lakhota, Teton or Teton Sioux, is a Siouan languages, Siouan language spoken by the Lakota people of ...

** O'odham *

Austroasiatic languages The Austroasiatic languages ( ) are a large language family spoken throughout Mainland Southeast Asia, South Asia and East Asia. These languages are natively spoken by the majority of the population in Vietnam and Cambodia, and by minority popu ...

Tonga Tonga, officially the Kingdom of Tonga, is an island country in Polynesia, part of Oceania. The country has 171 islands, of which 45 are inhabited. Its total surface area is about , scattered over in the southern Pacific Ocean. accordin ...

Australian Aboriginal languages The Indigenous languages of Australia number in the hundreds, the precise number being quite uncertain, although there is a range of estimates from a minimum of around 250 (using the technical definition of 'language' as non-mutually intellig ...

** Bandjalang **

Yolŋu The Yolngu or Yolŋu ( or ) are an aggregation of Aboriginal Australian people inhabiting north-eastern Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory of Australia. ''Yolngu'' means "person" in the Yolŋu languages. The terms Murngin, Wulamba, Yalnumat ...

Languages of China There are several hundred languages in the People's Republic of China. The predominant language is Standard Chinese, which is based on Beijing dialect, Beijingese, but there are hundreds of related Chinese languages, collectively known as ''Hany ...

** Zhuang† (replaced by the digraph ''ng'' in 1986) **

Hanyu Pinyin Hanyu Pinyin, or simply pinyin, officially the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet, is the most common romanization system for Standard Chinese. ''Hanyu'' () literally means ' Han language'—that is, the Chinese language—while ''pinyin'' literally ...

† used ŋ as a short hand form of ng. *

Polynesian languages The Polynesian languages form a genealogical group of languages, itself part of the Oceanic branch of the Austronesian family. There are 38 Polynesian languages, representing 7 percent of the 522 Oceanic languages, and 3 percent of the Austr ...

(all three using either ⟨g⟩ or ⟨ng⟩ when ⟨ŋ⟩ is not available on the keyboard) ** Anutan language ** Eɱae language **

Rapa Nui language Rapa Nui or Rapanui (, Rapa Nui: , Spanish: ), also known as Pascuan () or ''Pascuense'', is an Eastern Polynesian language of the Austronesian language family. It is spoken on Easter Island, also known as ''Rapa Nui''. The island is home to ...

** Inari Sami **

Lule Sami Lule Sámi (, , ) is a Uralic- Sámi language spoken around the Lule River in Sweden and in the northern parts of Nordland county in Norway. In Norway it is especially seen in Hamarøy Municipality (formerly Tysfjord Municipality), where Lule ...

Northern Sami Northern may refer to the following: Geography * North, a point in direction * Northern Europe, the northern part or region of Europe * Northern Highland, a region of Wisconsin, United States * Northern Province, Sri Lanka * Northern Range, a ...

** Ume Sami ** Skolt Sami **

Kildin Sami Kildin may refer to: * Kildin Island Kildin (also Kilduin; , North Sami: Gieldasuolu) is a small Russian island in the Barents Sea, off the Russian shore and about 120 km from Norway. Administratively, Kildin belongs to the Murmansk Obla ...

(during Latinisation in the 1930s) *

Turkic languages The Turkic languages are a language family of more than 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia (Siberia), and West Asia. The Turkic langua ...

during Latinisation in the 1930s used Ꞑ ꞑ, sometimes considered a variant of eng. **

Kazakh language Kazakh is a Turkic language of the Kipchak branch spoken in Central Asia by Kazakhs. It is closely related to Nogai, Kyrgyz and Karakalpak. It is the official language of Kazakhstan, and has official status in the Altai Republic of Russia ...

† (2019 revision of the Latin alphabet; replaced with Ñ in the April 2021 proposal) *

Mapuche language Mapuche ( , ; from 'land' and 'people', meaning 'the people of the land') or Mapudungun (from 'land' and 'speak, speech', meaning 'the speech of the land'; also spelled Mapuzugun and Mapudungu) is either a language isolate or member of the sm ...

(Wirizüŋun script) *

Kalam languages The Kalam languages are a small family of languages in the Madang subgroup of Papua New Guinea. The languages that make up the family are Kalam, Tai, and Kobon. They are famous for having perhaps the smallest numbers of lexical verb In lingui ...

Kalam language Kalam is a Kalam language of Papua New Guinea. It is closely related to Kobon, and shares many of the features of that language. Kalam is spoken in Middle Ramu District of Madang Province and in Mount Hagen District of Western Highlands Prov ...

Computer encoding

Eng is encoded in Unicode as U+014A LATIN CAPITAL LETTER ENG and U+014B LATIN SMALL LETTER ENG, part of the

Latin Extended-A Latin Extended-A is a Unicode block and is the third block of the Unicode standard. It encodes Latin letters from the Latin ISO character sets other than Latin-1 (which is already encoded in the Latin-1 Supplement block) and also legacy characte ...

range. In

ISO 8859-4 ISO/IEC 8859-4:1998, ''Information technology — 8-bit single-byte coded graphic character sets — Part 4: Latin alphabet No. 4'', is part of the ISO/IEC 8859 series of ASCII-based standard character encodings, first edition published in 1988. I ...

(Latin-4) it's located at BD (uppercase) and BF (lowercase). In African languages such as

, ''ng (with an apostrophe) is widely used as a substitute in media where eng is hard to reproduce.

Gallery

File:Ngummi.png, An 1856 text in

Gamilaraay The Gamilaroi, also known as Gomeroi, Kamilaroi, Kamillaroi and other variations, are an Aboriginal Australian people whose lands extend from New South Wales to southern Queensland. They form one of the four largest Indigenous nations in Austr ...

, using a rotated capital G as a substitute for ŋ. File:Kiŋston Bildiŋz, near Bath Abbey - geograph.org.uk - 717317.jpg, Uppercase eng with the reversed-N-form on the Kingston Buildings in Bath, UK. File:Ŋ in William Ridley (1875), Kámilarói, and other Australian languages - p.4.png, Lowercase and uppercase eng with the reversed-N-form of the uppercase used in a 1875 Gamilaraay text. File:Ŋ in William Ridley (1875), Kámilarói, and other Australian languages - p.40.png, Eng used in a 1875 Gamilaraay text.

File:Italic eng (with tail like double storey g).svg, Italic ŋ based on double-storey g as used in

Horatio Hale Horatio Emmons Hale (May 3, 1817December 28, 1896) was an American-Canadian ethnologist, philologist and businessman. He is known for his study of languages as a key for classifying ancient peoples and being able to trace their migrations. Hale ...

's ''Ethnography and Philology'' (1846). Nhooks.svg,

ᶇ The palatal hook (◌̡) is a type of hook diacritic formerly used in the International Phonetic Alphabet to represent palatalized and prevelar consonants. It is a small, leftwards-facing hook joined to the bottom-right side of a letter, and i ...

 ŋ  ɲ  ɳ: four "n"-based IPA symbols for nasal sounds. File:Latin letter Eng (first variant of capital form).svg File:Latin letter Eng (second variant of capital form).svg File:Latin letter Eng (third variant of capital form).svg File:Latin letter Eng (fourth variant of capital form).svg File:Latin letter Eng (fifth variant of capital form).svg File:Latin letter Eng (sixth variant of capital form).svg, Sixth variant of capital form completely resembles Cyrillic "и"

References

External links

Practical Orthography of African Languages
*FileFormat.info – Fonts that suppor

an

{{Latin script, N , show diacritic = hook , show pairs = no Latin letters with diacritics Phonetic transcription symbols Latin-script letters